One of the only ways God can get us to let go of our private salvation project is some kind of suffering. It is that very suffering that forces us to let go of our ego. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," June 15, 2016
Truer words were never spoken...heard...agreed to. Yet, still we struggle, fight, resist giving over, giving up, giving in. As Laurens Van de Post has written: One of the most pathetic things about us human beings is our touching belief that there are times when the truth is not good enough for us; that it can and must be improved upon. We have to be utterly broken before we can realize that it is impossible to better the truth. It is the truth that we deny which so tenderly and forgivingly picks up the fragments and puts them together again.
Just reading the written word, agreeing with those words, will never change us. The words may give us a new way of seeing, a different view from the head, but the change we still seek is for a way to avoid the suffering we agree is necessary.
We may even believe we agree to suffering, give our permission as it were, but we are just trying to make an end run around God's will, or what we fear God's will is for us. We must needs be in deep pain before we would ever agree to more, not recognizing that this pain, this suffering, is the resisting ego trying to win...i.e., avoid suffering.
The surprise...shock, in fact...is that this is the right path, the only road I've ever found, to get to self-acceptance for it is self-acceptance that is the prize we seek. The self-acceptance that turns self into Self, and we know God the Father lives within us, without us, and we are free of me, free to be Me.
Thank you.
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